from the conflicted dept

On the heels of our last story about someone who raised the public's ire over a "real-world" Counter-Strike map, it seems these stories may only become more prevalent. This seems particularly likely given that the threat of legal action doesn't seem to serve much of a deterrance against those that wish to be creative with game maps in this respect. You had to know that this gaming envelope was only going to be pushed further. Such is the way of things. It's something of a one-up culture. In addition, I should note that I tend to think that punishing this kind of creation is generally wrong. It's a game map, nothing more.

However, I will admit to being heavily conflicted when I came across the story of another Counter-Strike map controversy, this one resulting from the creation of a map based on a local secondary school in Port Moody, British Columbia. The reaction from the locals upon discovering a video of the map on YouTube was, understandably, negative.

"We have rainbow-colored lockers, and it's our field of dreams... and then to watch the video game, and see people shooting up our field of dreams, it was just so disturbing," Alex Devlin, a teacher at Port Moody Secondary School, told CBC News. "I believe it's just a game, it's not reality... but a lot of kids don't live in reality, right," another local said.

Let me start off by saying that I get it. Given recent tragedies suffered on the North American continent, I completely understand the discomfort locals, especially parents, might feel discovering a map of their school being built in a game that is all about shooting. I won't begrudge them their animosity. However, I am extremely pleased that cooler heads prevailed in this case.

The map's creators helped their causes greatly when they published their own website to respond to their critics. Far from antagonizing, they decided to explain why they had chosen the school to serve as inspiration for their game map.

The map was this because it's architecture and design is rather ideal for the game's tactics. Furthermore, this is a location we are quite familiar with already. Additionally, supporters and fellow alumni are also likely familiar with this location, which makes it an ideal common ground for this game and its intended audience.

When you push the admittedly understandable emotional response to the side, their explanation makes a great deal of sense. Local gamers wanting to play a game they love in a fictional representation of a place they know. Once I took a deep breath, I realized that some of the games I love most, and some of those I'm looking forward to the most, feature real locations that I'm familiar with. Any game, for instance, that features the city of Chicago, regardless of the game's genre, is likely going to get a look from me, because I love the idea of playing out a fictional game in the city I love. This is no different, even if the game in question is one that involves weapons and shooting. More importantly, it certainly isn't something that should require legal action. Fortunately, the police in the area agree, saying so in what I would consider to be a surprisingly reasonable response.

Although the creation of such a video game is likely ill-conceived in the current climate, it does not constitute an offence. Investigators from the Port Moody Police Department have interviewed the developer of this game and have concluded that he does not pose a danger to the staff or students of Port Moody Secondary.

In the end, that's all that matters. There is no safety concern in making a map of a school for a game. It's just a map.

from the if-at-first-you-don't-get-sued,-try,-try-again dept

Recently, we covered the story of a Canadian Counter-strike enthusiast who created a map based on a Montreal metro station. It was greeted with a thorough lack of enthusiasm by Montreal's transport authority (STM), which claimed the map might "create panic among the city's public transport users," before deciding to head off the whole situation using good, old-fashioned, pre-murder-simulator copyright. Diego Liatis, the creator of the map, was threatened with a $50,000 fine by STM, which has done little to deter his efforts.

Diego Liatis, a Montreal gamer and entrepreneur, told Ars that he still plans on releasing a Counter-Strike: Global Offensive map of Berri-UQAM, the city’s most well-known metro station. He's moving forward—the map is due sometime in March 2013—even if it means a drawn-out lawsuit brought by the local transit authority.

“If you ask me to change the name of the station—forget about it,” Diego Liatis told Ars, starting the sentence in French and switching to English for emphasis. “I understand [copyright law]. But there are limits, such as the name of the station.”

Liatis still believes he has the right to reproduce a real world location and is currently in negotiations (a polite word meaning "lawyers conversing") with the STM to determine what can be left in and what needs to be removed to satisfy the transport authority.

Liatis said he planned on meeting in person with STM representatives later this week. While he is willing to alter the STM logo and a well-known piece of art that hangs above a track, he’s not willing to compromise on the name of the station or its layout.

The February 11 cease-and-desist letter reminds Liatis that the STM “had warned you that it did not authorize you to use its image nor reproduction of the station in question for this project,” adding that use of its name, acronyms, graphic symbols, and seal are “prohibited by law unless permission is granted by the STM.”

Liatis may be logically "correct" but there's not much logic contained in IP laws. He may be determined to stick it to l'homme, but even members of the LAN ETS community are backing away from Liatis, most likely in hopes of a continued, lawsuit-free existence.

Simon Marin, a LAN ETS spokesperson, told Ars in an e-mail that the university, and by extension its LAN party event (LAN ETS), is "disassociating itself" from Liatis and his map. Marin did not provide any further explanation.

Despite the legal issues and disconnection from LAN ETS, Liatis plans to release the map in the near future. His pushback against government overreach and copyright-as-deterrent is admirable, but some aspects of this story are beginning to paint him as a possibly unreliable narrator.

As quoted in our original piece, and repeated in the update from Ars Technica, Liatis again states that the STM's representative had concerns about the map's usefulness to potential terrorists.

Liatis added that STM's media representative, Amélie Régis, expressed concern to him that releasing the map would allow it to be used by actual terrorists training for an actual attack. Régis also said it would be "insulting" to Montreal's Arab community.

The representative from STM, however, claims she never spoke to Liatis.

UPDATE Tuesday 5:42pm CT: Régis finally wrote back to Ars, saying that she had never spoken to Liatis, and was "really surprised to read the opposite." Ars has contacted Liatis again to clarify who exactly he spoke with at the STM.

Many governments have operated on faith-based paranoia since the 9/11 attacks, which makes it easy to believe Liatis' account of the events. Whatever concerns the STM might have had about "panics" or "terrorists," it may have kept them to itself. Nearly a week on from this interview, Ars is still waiting for Liatis to back up this claim. The STM may be using copyright to block a map it feels could potentially have this effect on would-be terrorists and/or the public, but so far, it hasn't officially stated anything to that effect.

Despite the lack of official statement, it still looks as if the STM simply wants to shut down something that represents its station but adds guns to the mix. Government entities are quick to shy away from anything controversial in the War on Terrorism age, and the STM seems to be no exception. There's a point to Liatis' efforts, but it's likely to be buried under a hefty fine and accompanying lawsuit as he shows no signs of backing down. It's a costly game of chicken and the end result may be nothing more than another footnote in case law reasserting the "right" of public entities to claim copyright protection on publicly accessible areas in order to prevent "misuse" by ordinary citizens.

from the externalities-create-value-for-everyone dept

Recently, Mike wrote about the importance of externalities and spillovers in economics, and the fact that it's often best to allow other people to capture pieces of the value you create and build on top of it. Not only does this benefit the economy as a whole, it benefits the originator, because some of the additional value that people create feeds back to them.

In the video game world, a great example of this is when companies open their games up to mods, so users can tweak them or build entirely new games on top of the same basic engine. Valve's Counter-Strike series grew from a fan-made mod for Half-Life, which was so popular it has been credited with keeping Half-Life on gamers' radars for years longer than it would have been otherwise, leading Valve to hire the creators and turn it into its own game, which remains one of the company's most successful titles. This week another example bubbled up on Reddit, in the form of a captioned screenshot of the Steam store titled "Dear developers, this is why you should make your games moddable":

The game ARMA II: Combined Operations was on track to be another mostly-forgotten game, still enjoyed by a small group of fans with few other prospects. Then, two years after its release, and without getting any kind of promotional sale price, it started selling like crazy and surged to the front page of the Steam leaderboards. Why? Another team of developers One of the company's developers released the alpha of a project he'd been working on independently: Day Z, a zombie-survival game built as an ARMA II mod. Fans have been clamoring for a particular type of zombie game for a while now (and Cracked's Robert Brockway pitched a similar idea recently) and the description of Day Z sounds like it fits the bill—so when the free alpha of the mod was released, lots of people bought a copy of ARMA II so they could give it a try. The developer was expecting it to be a hit within the existing fan community, but he had no idea that it would cross over into the mainstream.

In this situation, everybody wins. Gamers get a new game, ARMA II gets renewed sales, Day Z gets to exist (without the need to build a brand new engine). The sales boost to the original might be temporary, or it might spark new interest in the game and revive it entirely, or it might inspire newer and even more popular mods, or... well, there are a lot of possibilities, none of them bad. All because the ARMA II creators had the foresight to let people add value to what they created.

Update: A commenter pointed out that Day Z is the independent project of one of the developers working on ARMA 3. Post has been updated to reflect that fact.